References

While online, some people self-disclose or act out more frequently or intensely than they would in person. This article explores six factors that interact with each other in creating this online disinhibition effect: dissociative anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, solipsistic introjection, dissociative imagination, and minimization of authority. Personality variables also will influence the extent of this disinhibition. Rather than thinking of disinhibition as the revealing of an underlying "true self," we can conceptualize it as a shift to a constellation within self-structure, involving clusters of affect and cognition that differ from the in-person constellation.

Previous typologies of male batterers, including typologies developed by means of rational-deductive and empirical-inductive strategies, are reviewed. On the basis of this review, 3 descriptive dimensions (i.e., severity of marital violence, generality of the violence [toward the wife or toward others], and psychopathology/personality disorders) that consistently have been found to distinguish among subtypes of batterers are identified. These dimensions are used to propose a typology consisting of 3 subtypes of batterers (i.e., family only, dysphoric/borderline, and generally violent/antisocial). A developmental model of marital violence is then presented, and the previous literature is reviewed to examine how each batterer subtype might differ on variables of theoretical interest. Finally, some of the methodological limitations of previous typology research are reviewed, and suggestions for future work are offered.